


Scenes of Consumption at Las Hollandais

by Neth_Smiley



Category: Hannibal (TV), The Cook The Thief His Wife And Her Lover
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 16:52:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15711354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neth_Smiley/pseuds/Neth_Smiley
Summary: Every night, for the past three months, Bedelia du Maurier has come to dine at Hannibal Lecter's restaurant, Les Hollandais with her bevy of companions. Among the other diners is Will Graham, determined to wait out his ex-boyfriend, and among Bedelia's crew is a young man who Graham falls into a torrid affair with. Perhaps Hannibal sees, but what will the famously violent Bedelia do when she finds out? Based on the film "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover", an excellent film minus the title.





	Scenes of Consumption at Las Hollandais

**Author's Note:**

> \- Not properly edited yet.  
> \- Currently WIP.  
> \- Having a good time with this all the same.

Bedelia du Maurier rushed the turn, eliciting a small squeak from her dining companion beside her. She spared a moment of disgust for him--Jonathan’s manners were good enough, but her efforts to improve his appearance had failed to make him look any better than a rather poor clerk. All the same, he was useful in his own way, nothing if not obedient. 

The food trucks lumbered beside her Prix, pale shapes looming out of the darkness to flow into the loading dock of Las Hollandais restaurant. Stray dogs scattered, yipping and parking at the metallic intruders taking them from their dinners. She strode out of the car, coming around to the back to match her men stripping the wailing rentor. She’d heard it all before, lack of money and customers and please, please, help me, please….  
It bored her. 

“If you didn’t want this, you’d pay when I asked you.” she said shortly. Her men rolled a plastic sheet under the supplicant, who tried to bolt before being beaten down again.   
“You’re wasting my time,” she snapped, “taking me away from a better dinner than you’ve ever had, I’m certain.” she smiled, a sharp, vicious gesture before grabbing the rentor and smashing the man’s face into the back of the Prix, listening impassively to the terrified squalling, the cracking, smashing sound of cartilage and bone.   
“Oh, l-leave ‘im alone!”   
Bedelia didn’t even look up at Jonathan, who’d limped out of the car to tremble at her side. She dropped the man roughly, then stood. 

“Before we do, Johnny, we must attend to our work. Roy, this is Jonathan. He’s my dining companion for the evening, and worth more standing there than you’ve ever been worth in your life.”

Below her, Roy burbled, sinuses filling further and further but unable to move. “Next time, pay when I ask you, or I’ll let the dogs pick up the pieces. Oh, Randal, Spangler, would you be so kind as to get some hot water for this mess? And a towel and soap?” Two of her crew stamped into Les Hollandais, returning a few moments later with a few frightened kitchen staff. Good, they remembered her--they should, after three months of her and her crew there nightly. She dipped her fingers into the water, a perfunctory gesture--she’d hardly touched Roy, after all. Ritual complete, she turned to Jonathan, glaring for no more reason than she liked to see the man squirm.   
“Did you have to wear black?” she asked, making him fidget, instantly and intensely aware of Bedelia projecting his being wrong, outcaste, unbecoming, unworthy back into him the way a deck crystal projects light.   
“It’s not black, it’s blue.” he protested, even as she lit a cigarette so that the smoke slid over her head like an imperfect veil. Well, there was his job, wasn’t it?  
“You shouldn’t smoke before dinner.” he added, so softly it almost sounded cold. “Nobody who’s going to eat smokes.”  
Bedelia took his arm--grabbed it, really--and began to steer the procession inside.   
“It’s black if I say it is.” she hissed. “And did I ask, did I fucking ask, about one quiet fucking smoke?”  
The logic, as well as the hand squeezing his arm like a polygraph cuff, was sound. 

The inside of Les Hollandais kitchen was cavernous, as though you had traveled through some gaping mouth into a greater stomach. Three, four, five stories above their heads the ceiling loomed, its steel bars seeming to form a solid form of what they now walked through--twisting plumes of smoke and steam and, tonight, feathers.   
“Where is Hannibal Lecter?” Bedelia demanded, looking around with irritation. Usually, Lecter met her at the doorway, spoke only to her, led her to table personally.   
“Preparing your dinner, Mme. du Maurier.” Hannibal Lecter’s deep, sonorous voice rang from one corner of the kitchen. He stood, the feathers stuck in his hair more crownlike in appearance than clownish. Nothing about him was clownish, was not, never could be. He smiled as much as his strange, still face allowed, giving a slight bow that was almost mocking.   
“It is always a pleasure, Madame, always.”

 

Will Graham looked across the dining room, halfway between lightly plotted murder and more gentle reveries. It was difficult to do either, of course, when that damned woman and her gang were taking up half the restaurant. Women frustrated him, the same ways men did, and then some. You spoke to a woman, or a group of women, and they would either be your friend instantly or string you along for nail-biting weeks, acting exactly the same, saying you were so cute, how stupid you were, touching you when you didn’t want to be touched and being shoved away when you wanted to sit nearby. Men, at least, were direct in their dislike. They said, are you a psycho? Your eyes are weird. Who reads anymore? You’re kind of a freak. And then, there you were. Fewer unknowns. Not none, no, just fewer. 

The men around her were just as obnoxious, without the attempt at manners. Alongside the woman, it made the outer shell of his evening grate. Three kinds of alcohol each, all in the same kind of glass, unnecessary decor and plate yanked from other tables, which now had to go bare. He turned back to his books, and back to his dinner. 

For all that people said about books being bad for the digestion, Graham had never found that to be true. If anything, it was the opposite. It accentuated the flavor of the food, brought to the fore the tone and the phrasing of what he was reading. Turning his head to his fork, he realized that the bite of food he had put on it had fallen off. Oh well.  
He looked back down at his book, finding his place, and beginning again. 

He felt the eye of somebody on him, and he looked up to see the small man looking over at him from behind one of the woman’s stolen centerpiece arrangements. He smiled at him across the table, and Graham found himself smiling back. Looked more like a student than anything, out of place in the expensive, carefully groomed restaurant and beside the loud, constantly interrupting crew. As soon as Graham held his eye, however, he looked back down, then stood up to scramble for the bathroom. 

A moment later, Graham stood, realizing momentarily that he needn’t have bothered waiting. The young man’s tablemates clearly hadn’t missed him, despite being the only member with any semblance of manners. The best guess he had was that Hannibal was being blackmailed or bribed by them, else Hannibal would have run them out by now. 

The bathroom was safer, at least, a quiet respite. Curiosity stirred Will as he stepped into the shining, sterile, egglike chamber, seeing the shaking student bent over one of the sinks, splashing water onto his face. Turning to face Will, he puffed a bit of water out, then hurried to dry his face with a towel before shunting his glasses on. His expression was shy, delicate, as though he was a faun returning to a spring now become a bathroom sink. Silently, Will backed out of the bathroom. There was no need to add on any pretense to his action.

Still curious, Will waited silently outside the restroom. Had this been the way Hannibal had seen him, when they had met? A strange, frightened, half-wild thing, with artistry and grace shadowed beneath the surface? Well, Hannibal had made his choice, with time. Let him swim in sauces, suit himself in feathers, Will would wait. A smile traced over his lips, just as the other stepped out. In the dimmer lights of the hall, he looked more like a faun that ever, turning to Will as though loath to go back to the table. Will smiled at him, and was encouraged by a returned smile, soft and gentle as the rest of his body. He was young, though not quite as Will had originally guessed, perhaps twenty-three years old, maybe a few years older. Of course, Will was still the elder by a considerable margin, but he’d rather be sure than awkwardly guess. 

The other man, with his wide dark eyes, reached out to touch Will with one slim hand, and Will accepted the touch. The curiosity of his touch, his face slowly beginning to smile, fascinated Will. He could not think of him as anything less than a faun, now, reveling in the silence that let them each create their own wonders. The faun tugged on Will’s arm, his tie, into the safety of a bathroom stall, his face a mask of pleas--and an underlying current of terror. 

Jonathan dared not speak, lest he break the spell between them, bring one of the men in to investigate, or worse, Bedelia. He pressed his face to the man’s chest, hoping the other would understand. It would not be too bad of a thing, he thought, to take a moment out of life, to feel and to love without the eyes of all upon you. He didn’t like being watched. Better to be behind the scenes, safe and anonymous. Through the wall the two men could hear the sounds of the kitchen, making the whole restaurant purr like a living thing as their hands formed one quick flurry of motion, parsing buttons, shifting clothes. 

“Jonathan?” Bedelia asked, pushing open the bathroom’s main door. “Aren’t you done yet? We’ve been waiting--or is there something new in there you’d like to mention?” Will stood on the toilet, crouching low and thankful for the chain flushers Les Hollandais currently had, holding his faun’s trembling hands gently as the young man stammered out an answer.   
“I’m just...just having a quiet moment. Y-you know how I can get over excited at the table, and I didn’t want to order too much, so I’m putting my thoughts in order. I’ll be out in a moment--”

“You sound like you’re lying, Jonathan.” her voice turned cold. “Why are you lying to me? Are you playing with yourself in there, then? Do you need me to count the minutes you’ve been gone?”   
Apparently that prospect was a frightening one, as the other--Jonathan, a suitable enough name there, god has given--squirmed in place, tears rising to his eyes.   
“Please, it’ll only be a second!”   
“Wash your hands, then. You don’t know who’s been in here, and you’ll be handling food. I don’t think it would look good for you to be sick.”  
“No, ma’am.”  
He waited a few moments, pressing himself to Will, then stepped out to face the woman he feared more than loved. Bending to the sink, he focused on his hands, the simple, pleasing movements of washing, the return to routine despite loathing it.   
“You took your time.” Bedelia said, watching him from the door before moving to press him against the sink.  
Jonathan squeaked in reply, for once glad of his short stature, which saved him from having his scrotum crushed into the counter. Of course, it was still painful, but not as painful. Counting blessings. 

Will slipped out, and Jonathan was silently grateful as Bedelia marched him back to the table. He didn’t want the man in trouble, after all. No need to include both of them. 

The next night, the two of them managed to steal off again. Will led them back into the kitchen, giving a wolfish grin across a trout platter at Hannibal. Will and Jonathan had already been kitchen favorites, and under the guise of a tour they were admitted to the deep bread cellar, told to stay as long as they wished.


End file.
